Essays on economic crisis, decoding dominant ideologies and creating a better world

There are no national solutions for Greece, or any other country

There is no Greek solution to Greece’s crisis. There can be only an international solution. However that solution unfolds, the day when a radically different course, a clear alternative to austerity, can no longer be avoided is perhaps drawing closer.

Aware of their dwindling support and the increasing desire among Greeks for a different course, the two “left of center” parties propping up the pro-austerity right-wing government of Greece may yet balk at committing a final suicide.

Four days after the expiration of a deadline handed down by European Union finance ministers, the leaders of Pasok and the Democratic Left were still refusing to fully agree to demands for yet another round of cuts and labor “reforms,” the standard euphemism for eliminating job protections. Those leaders’ reluctance to agree to terms with Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, and their apparent ending of talks (at least for the moment) on October 23, adds more uncertainty to the already conflicting signals coming from the Greek government.

The “troika” — the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission — have been unyielding in insisting that Greece impose more austerity on its citizens in exchange for the latest tranche of financing totaling €31.5 billion.

On the one hand, we have Mr. Samaras, head of the conservative New Democracy party, saying at last week’s European Union summit that Greece will be broke next month without the latest loan installment, yet declaring:

“The economy and society are at their limits, the bloodline of the economy that is liquidity is at point zero; unemployment has reached nightmarish levels and every Greek is facing a personal tragedy.”

On the other hand, the Greek finance minister, Yiannis Stournaras, in an October 22 speech to the Greek parliament, declared the country’s nightmare does not reside in the austerity cuts demanded in exchange for fresh loans, but rather in not imposing the cuts:

“The cost for the country will be boundless if we don’t get the €31.5bn installment. … If we don’t get the loan people will go hungry.”

Perhaps the finance minister, one of the “technocrats” who hold most portfolios in the current government, is unaware that Greeks already are starving. Several rounds of imposed austerity has brought only misery to the people of Greece. Here are some of the results:

Overall unemployment is at 25 percent.

Youth employment is at 55 percent.

Average wages have been cut 40 percent.

Cuts to the health care system of 25 percent since 2009.

Economy has shrunk 18.4 percent since 2008.

The years of austerity were supposed to turn around the Greek economy, yet the deficits only become larger. The country’s deficit for 2011 is now estimated to have been 9.4% and its debt has widened to 171% of gross domestic product. If more people are thrown out of work and those still employed take home less, then less can be bought and less taxes will be paid.

Although the International Monetary Fund quietly admitted earlier this month that austerity does not work, the troika is holding to a hard line in demanding still more austerity measures. Greece is expected to come up with another €13.5 billion in cuts. The troika demands implementing a six-day working week; further cuts to the minimum wage; further reductions to pensions; “increased flexibility” of work schedules; tens of thousands of government workers and professors be laid off; and income-tax rate gradations flattened, which would increase the tax burden on those who aren’t wealthy.

The latest €31.5 billion installment won’t be going to Greeks; virtually all of it will go to banks. A conservative Greek newspaper, Kathimerini, reported (based on a leak from Pasok) that Germany’s finance ministry demanded that an escrow account be set up that would ship money to the European Central Bank. The proposed escrow account would not only be the recipient of all the bailout money, but Greece’s tax revenues would also sent there.

To put this in plain language, Greece would be reduced to a vassal state in which it had no control over its finances and its tax revenues would be used to pay banks instead of for government functions.

European Union finance ministers had demanded, as long ago as February 2012, that such an escrow account be set up for bailout money, but the extension to Greece’s internal revenue is something new. Kathimerini quoted Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, as declaring:

“In the last program [for Greece] we introduced mechanisms; we need to strengthen those in the sense of control mechanisms, perhaps also automatic stabilizers.”

The “automatic stabilizers” are measures that would automatically further cut Greek government spending beyond whatever is agreed if the deficit grows wider. Given that austerity will lead to less revenue, a wider deficit is the likely outcome. Seeming to draw a line, Democratic Left leader Fotis Kouvelis on October 23, following the impasse in talks with Samaras, added still more contradiction to the government coalition’s signals. Kathimerini reported:

“ ‘If the unacceptable demands of the troika are met, they will increase sackings, unemployment and the recession,’ said Kouvelis, adding that he felt the troika was aiming to ‘flatten’ any working rights that remain.”

It must be asked, however, why Mr. Kouvelis’ Democratic Left, and Pasok, are propping up Mr. Samaras’ pro-austerity government, since such goals have long been in place. Mr. Samaras’ New Democracy — Greece’s leading big-business party — has strong links with European capital and has no basic disagreement with the ruthless austerity being imposed across the continent despite the prime minister’s public worry that the Greek “economy and society are at their limits.”

The waves of strikes that have washed over Greece is a development that Samaras can’t fail to notice. Yet he and his government have nothing to offer other than more austerity; the “troika” certainly has nothing else to offer. A radically different course is necessary. Greece can not survive as an island unto itself — to repeat, there is no Greek solution to Greece’s problems, only an international solution. Financiers and industrialists operate internationally, and working people have no alternative to uniting across borders in order to defend themselves.

That does not, however, mean that Greece can’t adopt new programs internally. The main political current offering a radically different program is Syriza, the Coalition of the Radical Left, the largest opposition party and which currently leads in polls. In a talk last summer, a Syriza representative laid out a different course:

“The reversal of the descent towards degradation and marginalization cannot be achieved without the implementation of a radical program of reforms and transformations of the state, the political system and the entire ‘body’ of the Greek social formation. … [T]he crisis we are living through is a crisis of the system itself, rather than simply a management crisis of the system. Everything must change: the political system, the state, the relation of the citizen with the state and with politics. Consequently, the way out cannot be found in a return to some version of the past. The way out lies in opening up new paths to new productive and consumption paradigms, to new forms of real democracy, to new social arrangements based on equality and solidarity, the respect of human dignity and the environment.”

Among the highlights of Syriza’s program are:

New taxation policies to lessen the burdens on low-income people and small businesses to make taxation more fair and to eliminate the large problem of the “black market” whereby many Greeks don’t pay taxes.

Elimination of the “clientist” system that rests on the “inside dealing” of the two-party system (New Democracy and Pasok) through a drastic overhaul of the administrative system and empowerment of citizens through bottom-up and top-down changes.

New institutions of workers’ control and social control to increase day-to-day democracy and accountability.

Democratic planning involving the parliament, the scientific community and society at large, linked to specific policies.

Development of long-term plans to reconstruct the economy on the basis of increased bargaining power for labor; reducing dependence on imports and external borrowing, supporting employment and respecting the environment; and building a society of justice, full employment and solidarity, with an enhanced and equal position in the European and international division of labor.

Changing the banking system to support the real economy and a targeted productive reconstruction, establishing public control over banking, and recapitalizing banks through the issuing of ordinary voting shares.

Such a program is by no means “revolutionary,” and Syriza supporters don’t claim it is. But such a program (which has much more to it than the above summation) is no mere reform, either; rather, it offers a radically different way of organizing Greek society tomorrow that can be built with the bricks of today. This program also keeps Greece connected to Europe; Greece can’t prosper in isolation.

Present-day Europe, in the form of a European Union dominated by the unaccountable and undemocratic European Central Bank, is not capable of becoming a platform for such a program as outlined by Syriza. Ultimately, Greeks, Europeans and everybody else can only prosper in a democratic system geared toward social good, public accountability and an economy oriented toward full participation and the development of all men and women.

The dismantling of the current structure of the E.U., one-sided trade agreements, international financial institutions and the immense power concentrated in corporate hands will have to be mirrored everywhere. If we are living in a globalized world, then the world’s salvation can only be on a global basis.

4 comments on “There are no national solutions for Greece, or any other country”

All this economism is driving me nuts. There are no solutions to the problem of national debt within the framework of capitalism. Borrowing more money only delays the inevitable collapse. New industries are only competing with other new industries in other countries causing gluts. Austerity is just a way to make life harder for the masses of people who can’t get real jobs in an economy that doesn’t need them. The answer! Revolution.

For now, I don’t have time to look up Greece’s food import vs. food export statistics, but from the few minutes of research I just did, Greece is a food importer, about twenty-five percent, and that is a big problem. A lot of Greek agriculture is dedicated to cotton and other non-food crops. Yes, we all know about olive oil, and fishing, they are significant, but people have to eat more than just olives. What I am trying to get at, is can Greece become self-sustaining? How is Greece feeding and clothing itself now? Do the Greeks really need German banks to do this?

A revolution would be about democratic self-management of the food and industrial sectors, geared to meeting the people’s needs. With 25% unemployment, what is happening now, that 25% of the people are not really engaged in production, no one is starving. What ever the banks do, and whether or not these people work or not, there is still the same amount of food, clothing, housing, and other essentials. This is not a crisis of resources or natural disaster, it is a crisis of consciousness. The profit system is breaking down, Keep and improve the same distribution system, for now, only get rid of the banks. Once the banks are gotten rid of, then the next step is to see where things can become more efficient, that is labor is divided up in a more rational way, resources are now geared towards meeting national needs, cooperation becomes a model, the crisis is now over.

The debt is going to have be renounced, sooner or later, and not only Greece. But regardless of the sequence of events, Greece doesn’t have to be self-sufficient. No country really can be, nor can one country go it alone encircled by a hostile capitalist system. The way forward for Greece is to be a part of a European-wide transcending of capitalism and establishment of a more humanistic, sustainable system. Nonetheless, I agree that Greece, in a more rational system, could provide more of its food and manufactured goods than it currently does.

The capitalist economy is global. It has made a concrete reality of what has heretofore only been an abstract ideal…that all men and women are brothers and sisters as we are all now linked together in a common enterprise and effort.
The debt crisis is also global. Any resolution or transcendence will therefore have to be global. The capitalist / national system is truly and incontrovertibly ( as well as literally ) bankrupt. And the system that arises out of the ashes of the debt debacle will necessarily be a globally based system, not a nationally based one.
The global debt crisis sets the stage for a globally based, directly and consciously managed new economic system, one that offers great hope and potential for the future, but one which equally carries with it much risk for catastrophic consequences.

We are on the threshold, not of the end of history, but its beginning, the beginning of truly human history, one in which production and allocation decisions are made directly and consciously by human beings, not blindly and chaotically, and all too often disastrously by the so called market. It’s time for mankind to assume responsibility and become the subject of history, not merely its object.

Thank you for such a beautiful and moving summation of the human condition. We are not guaranteed a better world, but we will have one if the world’s working people unite to create it. Let us hasten the dawn!